*Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* Yep, back to the bomb shelter (or out to the playground). Didn't we just have one of these drills last week? Seems it like anyway. Still, best to be prepared. This time, it's AMTer in chief Kawabata Makoto, a veritable psych guitar guru, teamed up with veteran French avant-guitarist Jean-Francois Pauvros, whom many of you might recall from a previous collaboration a few years back with Kawabata (Extreme Onction). He's also recorded with another Japanese psych guitar guru: Keiji Haino. Together, here, Kawabata and Jean-Francois stir up three long tracks of psych-guitar improv beauty. It's a billowing blowout of both droning nightmare whalesong and subtle scrabbly textures, wrung ffrom guitars, bows, amps, and the cosmos. Venus has a seductive softness to it, even when it's loud. PSF brand goodness for sure.
See our review of Kawabata's "I'm In Your Inner Most" for the obligatory *I can't believe it's yet another Kawabata Makoto/Acid Mothers Temple release but it's actually pretty good so why complain* comments, they apply to this cd-r (a reissue of an out-of-print cd-r on the AMT label) as well, even though "Electric Guitars" is quite a bit different from "Inner Most" -- Kawabata and collaborator Miyamoto Naoaki (MNS) dial up the feedback, noise, and distortion on this one. A bliss-out trip only for those who like their dreams cranked to 11. Nightmares are more like it. As the title suggests, the duo's weapons of choice are electric guitars, there's nothing else on here. They wrangle their guitars over three long, probably fully improvised tracks, one of 'em creating a droning, evil atmosphere while the other picks out non-melodic note-shards, and vice versa. Psychedelic skree that's just restrained enough to be listenable when in the mood for this moodiness (rather than being sheer noise terror in the Merzbow or Solmania vein). Not just a collector's item, but a cheap fix courtesy of Last Visible Dog for those into the darker side of Kawabata Makoto's ouevre.
After being out of print and unavailable for far too long (a coupla years anyway), the kind folks at VHF have repressed this, at last. Here's what we had to say about this great record back when it came out in 2001, originally:
"The entirely too prolific Kawabata Makoto (who fronts Acid Mothers Temple) joins AQ fave Richard Youngs for a surprisingly tranquil, and beautifuly melancholic record of swirling haze and delicate melodies, employing acoustic guitar, autoharp, organ, and voice. Rather than have titles, on the back cover this disc's songs are differentiated by colored bars of varying length.
Medium length blue bar: distorted autoharp over a fuzzy drone of muted melodies, with beautiful plaintive vocals soaring over the rich sonic miasma.
Longer orange bar: gentle finger picked guitar over far away wind chimes and dreamy soundscapes.
Green bar shorter than the blue one: manipulated vocals time stretched and twisted into alien melodies over a warm buzzing hum and acoustic guitar.
Short red bar and really short purple bar: two tracks of gorgeous melodies on acoustic guitar with simple droning organ chords and fluttering high end organ noodling.
Really beautiful and totally mesmerising. Some of the best work by both Makoto and Youngs, who have curbed their penchant for all out noise and given us a glimpse into their sensitive sides."
Of course, since we wrote the above review (which first appeared on list 124), the ever-prolific Kawabata has explored some other equally "sensitive" realms, but this is still one of the best from amongst his mellower stuff. And Youngs (who often allows that glimpse) has also increased his profile to some degree, bringing us such AQ-faves as May, Airs Of The Ear (especially), and River Through Howling Sky. So we imagine there's got to be a bunch of you out there who have only discovered either Youngs or Kawabata relatively recently, or otherwise somehow missed this before and thereby (not to use to strong a word, but...) NEED it now.
It's been several years since this was last available, so all AMT fans who missed Hot Rattlesnakes the first time should be happy that Prophase has reissued this album (originally released by Paratactile in 2002). Here's our review from back then, all comments about AMT's prodigious output still valid:
Another two weeks have passed. Must mean it's time for another AQ-list. AND another Acid Mothers Temple record!! That's a slight exaggeration, but -only- slight, as the insanely prolific Makoto Kawabata (surpassed only by the stupidly prolific Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices) unleashes yet more music, this time with his power trio Mothers Of Invasion and their debut recording "Hot Rattlesnakes" (a reference to the only Zappa record Allan thinks you might want to own). Fans know what to expect and won't be disappointed. Track one is a thirty minute, freaked out psychedelic rock and roll jam. Bass (Tsuyama Atsushi) and drums (Ichiraku Yoshimitsu) kicking out an endless groove while Kawabata goes to fuckin' town! Wailing and squealing and spraying gobs of freaked out Hendrix guitar all over the place. Endless guitar god nirvana. You know you love it! Track two is ten minutes of delayed and reverbed guitars warped into a hypnotic wash of warm guitar atmospherics and gently finger picked low end melodies. Subtle and quite nice. The closing 15 minutes is back to the jam, with an even more intense burst of psychedelic mayhem, phasers set to stun and flangers set to... well to FLANGE MOTHER FUCKER!!!!! The track blisses out for a moment while Kawabata wrings some emotion from his dying guitar, only to bring it back to life and exit in a blaze of guitar shredding, amp melting glory!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Recorded in 1970, these sessions represent a sort of "prequel" to what would eventually become AQ fave Japanese psych act Flower Travellin' Band. Having cut one record as Yuya Uchida and the Flowers, this line up brought in Joe, the inimitable vocalist whose trademark sound did much to make the band stand out from the pack and organist/pianist Kuni Kawachi from another sixties band The Happenings Four. While Kawachi never made the cut, for whatever reason, for the final group that would later record FTB debut Anywhere, his Hammond organ grumblings add a nice touch to the tracks here. In addition to Kawachi's organ, singer Joe plays his harmonica more than he did on later recordings, giving these recordings a bluesier sound. While we're not going to fool you into thinking this is anything near as great as Satori or even Made In Japan, it's got some great heavy psychedelic jams that are certainly as great as anything they did for their first album. And for those who were turned off by Anywhere due to its consisting entirely of covers, it will be comforting to know that the tracks here are all originals. If anything, they are a lot closer to what ended up on Satori, albeit a great deal more primordial and lacking the taughtness of their later works.
Newly reissued, now as a 2-on-1 with another, later album, we've previously listed a cd of Kirikyogen, organist/pianist Kuni Kawachi's 1970 recording with hard rockin' Japanese psych geniuses Flower Travellin' Band (which barely preceded those AQ faves debut on their own, Anywhere, also 1970). Kawachi came from sixties Group Sounds band The Happenings Four, and made a great decision in teaming up with the nascent FTB (who had started off as Yuya Uchida and the Flowers, another GS act) for Kirikyogen, especially since Flowers/FTB had recently recruited Joe Yamanaka, the inimitable vocalist whose trademark wail did much to make Flower Travellin' Band band stand out from the pack later on. With Joe on the mic, and guitarist Hideki Ishima coming into his own, Kirikyogen is very much Flower Travellin' Band, the prequel! Meanwhile, Kawachi's Hammond organ grumblings add a nice touch to the tracks here, which he also wrote, for the most part. In addition to Kawachi's organ, singer Joe plays his harmonica more than he did on later recordings, giving these recordings a bluesier sound. While we're not going to tell you this is anything near as great as FTB's Satori or even Made In Japan, it's got some great heavy psychedelic jams (like the title track, and "Works Composed Mainly By Human") that are certainly as good as anything they did for their first album. If anything, they are a lot closer to what ended up on Satori, albeit a great deal more primordial and lacking the taughtness of their later works. It should also be noted that Kirikyogen is about 1/2 heavy Hendrix-y grooves, 1/2 more acoustic-y (but lovely), not as heavy melodic material.
Also to be noted, as alluded to above, this cd reissue also includes Kawachi's 1972 follow-up Love Suki Daikirai, which is appears as the first 14 tracks here for some reason rather than being presented in chronological fashion. Love Suki Daikirai doesn't feature any FTB folks (and is thus automatically less rockin'), but does have Kimio Mizutani on guitars, whose solo album A Path Through Haze was also recently reissued by Bamboo and reviewed by us (and which happened to feature, yes, Kuni Kawachi on keyboards!). Much more gentle and meandering than its predecessor, this later album certainly has its beautiful and/or freaky moments, but Kirikyogen, #25 in Julian Copes "Japrocksampler" Top 50, is still the primary reason to pick this up.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Lots of Japanese psych this list, eh? Not one but two Acid Mothers Temple releases, the psych-tinged doom of Garadama, and also this half-hour, limited edition debut cd-r release from Masami Kawaguchi's New Rock Syndicate. Masami Kawaguchi? That's the former guitar guru who dealt the high-decibel damage in underground Japanese psych outfit Miminokoto (he's also been a member of Broomdusters, LSD-march, and Keiji Haino's Aihiyo). But now Miminokoto are no more -- long live the New Rock Syndicate!
Miminokoto, over several desirable releases that had come our way in recent years, carved a niche for themselves as a particularly melancholy and melodic Japanese garage psych band, one that pushed the VU meters (and comparisons) both with heavy duty guitar excess and almost-poppy punk jangle. Kawaguchi's new trio carries on the tradition, his guitar and vocals well supported by bassist Akira Kikuchi and drummer Nao Shibata over the course of these five tracks, which vary from all-out psych overload, as displayed by wailing opener "(Theme From) New Rock Syndicate" for instance, to more relatively restrained fare like "Mienakunaru" (which hints at the trippy grooves of The Doors) and the (mostly) gentle balladry of "Everything Is", wherein everything is aching with misery. None are untouched by the shrapnel coming off of Kawaguchi's six string, though, which is definitely a forced to be reckoned with on the final track, "Tottemo", which channels "Louie Louie" just a bit, but with more than enough distortion and feedback and destructiveness to give you Tokyo Flashbacks for weeks...
We're definitely looking forward to seeing Kawaguchi & Co. when they come play out here in SF and perhaps elsewhere Stateside in October.
It's ben a wild, weird and sexy ride through the strange world of sixties and seventies Japanese sonic erotica (serotica?) courtesy of the fine folks at Japan's Tiliqua label. And it isn't over yet! We were led to believe that number five, recently reviewed right here, the amazing and bizarre Girlfriend - Baby Doll by Petite M'Amie would be the last, but no, we were just resting, catching our breath, recharging as it were, and now it's time to plunge right back in...
What the heck are we talking about? It's Tiliqua's Erotic Oriental Sunshine series of Japanese erotic music from the sixties and seventies chronicling the criminally under-documented sounds of Iroke Kayoyoku, a sort of loungy exotica, equal parts Les Baxter and Ennio Morricone, a bastardized version of a more popular Asian music of the time, a funky, groovy, soulful soundtrack music, but sexed up with chanteuse like crooning, and most important of all, an amazing array of moaning and groaning and cooing and giggling, very playful and silly and sexy. The first five volumes were all fantastic, fun and funny and funky and far out, and unfortunately now all out of print, discs from Japanese sexy action heroine Ike Reiko, Japanese "Play Girl" Kuwabara Yukiko, seventies bondage / S&M queen Naomi Tani, legendary porn actress Taguchi Kumi, and most recently what could quite possibly be the first Iroke disc (and thus the rarest), from sexy Lolita, Petite M'Amie, aka Mari Keiko.
We also considered Keiko's contribution to the series to be the strangest by far, and while it was pretty weird, it sounds downright tame when compared to this, the latest in the series, Kokotsu/ Ecstasy by Masami Kuwahara & The Exotic Sounds, originally released in 1970, but practically forgotten and lost until now.
Unlike the other titles in the series, this one is not the recording of a particular vixen, instead, it's the work of composer and arranger (and future husband of Ike Reiko, Masami Kuwahara, who was responsible for many of the Iroke recordings, including Reiko's and this one right here. A Latin, late night Tiki mamba exotica lounge jazz mash up...
The opening track sets the tone, smoldering and sultry, with moaning late night muted trumpet, marimba and jungle drums, a sweaty sweltering vibe, with lots of Les Baxter like sonic filigree, while as is the style of Iroke, a lusty lady giggles and and coos, moans and groans, as if she is alternately being pleasured, tickled or spanked. In fact after a brief burst of furious congas and horns beneath the sounds of what definitely sounds like actual love making, comes the creepy third track, all fluttering flutes and tribal percussion, wherein another lady gets slapped or spanked, and squeals and squeaks appreciatively. You can even hear the man's grunts, his exertion and passion evident as he sexily slaps his woman, ummm, okay. Well, it was a different time, but that one definitely sounds more freaky than sexy, but the music, ohhh man, gorgeous flutes, and a minor key full moon marimba melody, the perfect soundtrack for a night of masochistic fun. Then the next track, things are off again, the drums wild and frenzied, the females rapid breathing and sounds of passion mirroring the intensity of the music.
The whole record sort of swings back and forth, from languid late night crawls, all warm and humid and romantic, to blown out blasts of intense sexy freaked out flesh and frenzy. Might be the first record in the series that is less 'gimmick' and more music, with every track steering well clear of the sort of Lawrence Welk meets Morricone smooth jazz of the other discs in the series and offering up some seriously bad ass Latin lounge-y exotica.
The final track, another of the slow sultry numbers, peters out, leaving one of the ladies to moan passionately, obviously in the throes of post coital bliss, seemingly as exhausted as we are from these nearly forty minutes of sexy sonics...
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, extra saucy nude photos of Kawahara on the cover, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese including an interview with the lady herself!
ULTRA LIMITED!!! Like most of the others in this series, this one is a one time only limited pressing of only 1000 copies, and is already pretty much sold out. There's a good chance once these are gone we will be unable to get more...
Back in 2001 we reviewed two simultaneously-released albums by a really strange death metal / prog rock / new age collison of a band called Maudlin Of The Well. Perhaps you remember them, they were pretty great and weird, and hard to figure out. Now, two years later, Maudlin Of The Well are back in the guise of Kayo Dot. Not sure why they changed their name, it must have had something to do with signing to John Zorn's Tzadik label. Yes, they're on Tzadik -- their avant-garde dreams come true! John Zorn is their buddy now! But it's clearly the same band. And if anything, better and more bizarre than before. Imagine an epic combination of Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Radiohead's OK Computer, Neurosis or Tarantula Hawk, and Faith No More circa Angel Dust (Kayo Dot's singer definitely has some sort of crush on Mike Patton)!! The heavy parts are HEAVY, the pop stuff nicely poppy, the dreamy stuff way dreamy and delicate. Music to float along with, or dive down deep into. The dense heavy sections approach Boris or Pelican levels, with screams buried beneath the din...then it'll break down into a piano interlude or Frippish guitar solo. The most avant black metal acts also would appear to be part of Kayo Dot's listening diet. An unusual Tzadik release to be sure -- even with the chamber strings and jazz horns and prog moves and psychedelically noisy parts, this has a core of both pop and metal that ironically makes this one of the *most* experimental releases on the label! Recommended.
Hot on the heels of the excellent "solo" album from Kayo Dot frontman Toby Driver we reviewed last list, comes this new opus from Kayo Dot proper. They've moved from Tzadik to metalcore label Robotic Empire, but Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue is no less avant-garde than previous KD output, that's for sure (you ought to be able to tell that just by the title, eh?). A confusing, crushing blend of Godspeed, Neurosis, John Zorn, Amber Asylum, Oxbow... Kayo Dot's apparent points of reference make for a mysterious listen. It's chamber-prog rock, it's metal, it's melodic and mysterious, with cryptic lyrics softly intoned amidst the creepy, ambient beauty, marred (not really) by violent outbursts of claustophobic heaviness, when and if the track builds to such a climax... Or marred by jazzy saxophone solos, there's that too. You can tell why John Zorn likes 'em! Actually, sax only surfaces significantly on "Aura On An Asylum Wall" which also has some of the album's most brutal blasting passages to make up for all that jazziness. There's also rumbling percussion and droning strings and sensitive singing and long stretches of ominous, dark, weighty quietude -- track lengths reach up to 18 minutes and are often more soundscapey than anything "song-structured". It's about as experimental as you can get and still appear on a nominally "metal" label.
We've long been fans art metallers Kayo Dot (who were born from another band we loved, metallic chamber prog weirdos Maudlin Of The Well) and they just keep getting better and better, weirder and weirder. And who better to get matched up with for a split lp, that outsider art sludge combo Bloody Panda? Who, much like Bathtub Shitter, we liked before we even heard em cuz how can you not with a name like that?! And thankfully their sound more than lived up to the high expectations we had because of the name.
Anyway, these two groups are pretty well matched, different enough to keep things interesting, but similar enough to ensure that most folks who dig one, will most likely dig the other.
Kayo Dot start things off with the side-log "Don't Touch Dead Animals", which begins with some creepy female spoken word before lurching into some woozy dark jazz, blissy and warbly underpinned by thick (yet subtle) metal guitars. The sound is slithery and late night, like a metal tinged Bohren or DJ Shadow. Eventually, this dark lounge groove builds into some serious metallic crunch, with wailing horns and anguished female vocals, and truly killer drumming. A glorious trainwreck, blown out free jazz groove all tangled up in some dirgey heaviness. Pretty great.
Bloody Panda counter with what starts out as just a simple caveman plod, with distant moaning metallic guitars, a weird sort of doomy ambience, but it pretty quickly amps up into a massive churning slab of doomy sludge. Guitars are huge and downtuned, poured over everything like viscous goop, the vocals are bizarre, some chanted and crooned, others garbled and alien sounding. There are brief bits of post rocky bliss, and some weird ambient spaciness, but for the most part, this is the sound of a huge Bloody Panda, trudging through tarpits and molten rock, leaving a swath or ruin behind it, crushing everything in its path.
Pressed on super swank grey and brown splattered vinyl, and housed in an eye popping full color gatefold sleeve.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Altered States/Ground Zero guitarist's second solo album, all-live, no overdubs, but featuring plenty of effects and the occasional use of a guitar synth. Not to be mistaken for a noise record, or a jazz one for that matter, this is an intricate, almost-magical improv session of guitar experimentation.
Here's another attack, this time via Tzadik, from the dynamic duo of Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins, Korekyojinn, etc.) and Kazuhisa Uchihashi (Ground Zero, Altered States, etc.). These two Japanese superheroes of spazzed out improv prog shred have teamed up on at least 3 previous installments of drums/guitar only avant-garde mayhem, but the world needs more - too much is never enough with these guys!
Tatsuya Yoshida is as octopoidal as ever in his percussive abilities, and again shows off his quasi-operatic but utterly abstract vocal stylings upon occasion here as well. Meanwhile, veritable guitar whiz Kazuhisa Uchihashi is all over his instrument, making it make sounds from all across the spectrum of skronk, and beyond, visiting sundry rock styles, as advertised, in sliced up snippets and shards� Together they're telepathic in their ability to segue out of a full-on freakout into something that almost sounds composed, even melodic! Many of the dozen thrombulating tracks are riotous and rambunctious, though there's also moments of calm, as in "Equillbhimgorzz" with its echoed vox stretched over skittery soundscapes.
Probably not for everybody (as this music sounds like their song titles read!), but those who know they want it, know they want it. And the Yoshida/Uchihashi duo, with their exquisite control over what could otherwise sound quite uncontrolled, won't let you get bored. Exciting improv ADD entertainment here, folks!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Delightfully improvised pieces with no overdubs played on guitar and Hans Reichel's self-built daxophone. Difficult-but-fun music that recalls Raymond Scott's wonderfully cartoonish jazz, but with a much more avant garde slant.
The concept here is as straightforward as the title, though it might require some explaining for the average Westerner. Kazutoki Umezu is a Japanese jazz saxophone improviser, perhaps best known to us for his collaborations with Ruins. He also had a disc on the Knitting Factory label a long time ago. Enka is kind of the Japanese cultural equivalent of American country or blues music, a traditional song style much beloved by the quote-unquote common folk, songs about life and love from a proletarian perspective. It's not normally intended for instrumental, jazz-inflected saxophone performance, but the talented "Doctor" Umezu takes enka and makes it his own, delivering emotional, intricate, and sometimes quite energetic interpretations of 14 enka standards as solos on alto and soprano sax, also clarinet and bass-clarinet.
Minor key, melancholic, and so very melodic, this is a quite beautiful synthesis of Umezu's Japanese roots with his "foreign" love for jazz (hardly foreign in Japan, of course, which is home to a happenin' jazz scene). The unavoidably "lonely" cry of Umezu's unaccompanied reeds well evokes the mood we expect enka often conveys. We're not exactly jazz experts, so probably many better comparisons could be made, but this reminds us a bit of the work of the late great Albert Ayler, due to Ayler's penchant for the use of folk motifs in his free jazz compositions. Recommended to anyone into sax solos for sure, especially sad ones.
While this doesn't boast a special die-cut cover like that Sim+Otomo disc we highlighted last list, it's still housed in quite a handsome looking digipack as is always the case due to Doubtmusic label's tasteful packaging aesthetic. The inner sleeve includes English language liner notes all about enka to help listeners understand what Umezu is up to here, giving a bit of context that the lack of lyrics may or may not leave necessary.
Gregg Turkington (voice of Neil Hamburger / Faxed Head participant) and local S.F. luminary Brandan Kearney have put together an entire book of -- as the title implies -- record reviews contrived as anagrams of the artist name and album title... Almost. See, at times the authors chose to bend the rules a bit by adding a word or two so as to have more letter material to work with. For instance, with the album "Face Value" by Phil Collins, they use "Genesis drummer Phil Collins' solo hit: Face Value" to come up with "So, this foul gremlin evildoer cheapens all music". Cheating? dunno. But I suppose it's funnier than anything you could come up with by being restricted to the album title and artist name (the best I could come up with sitting here is "full lice alive on chaps"), but that's the fun of anagrams isn't it? You have your predetermined restrictions and then do your best to come up with something using them, and most of the time you end up with something non-sensical. Before I poo poo this any further, to their credit, the pair have come up with a shit load of excellent anagrams -- sometimes sick, often hilarious -- within the expected restrictions. For instance, The Cranberries' "Bury The Hatchet: The Complete Sessions" becomes "Boy's reluctant speech: 'betcha Irish semen rots her teeth!" and Sleater Kinney "All Hands On The Bad One" becomes "Halt! Not heroines! Sneaky. Leaden. Bland." Seventy pages of such anagrams will be sure to keep you laughing for weeks as you sit on the toilet. And no one is spared the hatchet, not even Neil Hamburger or Faxed Head.
Another awesome unearthed post punk gem, this one from a young Belgian combo of crusty anarcho DIY youths, heavily influenced by Crass, but sounding way more like the Slits or the Raincoats. Early eighties art punk / post punk / new wave, this gorgeous reissue collects their entire recorded output, including some seriously rare stuff, including their original demo tape, which was released in 1981 in a run of 30 copies.
The record begins with some crunchy jagged guitars, a simple drum plod, spoken female vocals and a woozy tangled bassline, before exploding into an awesomely lowslung post punk groove, all Joy Divisiony bass, clanging echo drenched guitars, swirls of effects, the vocals leaping from melodic croon, to feral yelp to strident sloganeering to sing songy and anthemic, the lyrics simple and heartfelt, punk and political, the songs laced with lullaby like keyboard melodies, the drums frenetic and propulsive, the sound gloomy, but simultaneously wild and celebratory, bits of strange electronic percussion here and there, mysterious synth blurts, raw and a little bit primitive and totally DIY, anyone who's been digging the recent spate of cold/new wave reissues, will for sure dig this too.
Killer packaging, a massive fold out poster sleeve, with photos and a vintage interview on one side, a huge blurry band photo on the other, with a little hand stamped envelope affixed to the inside containing a folded up lyric sheet.
This is Kebnekaise (formerly Kebnekajse)'s third album from 1975, kinda like "II" with the trad Swedish folk elements, and the unexpected afrojazz parts, but MORE SO. We can't help but think that the folk/classical sounding pieces on here aren't too
Swedish psychedelic hippy rock band's second album, from 1973, newly reissued on cd. While their first album was fun, zany hard rock taking off from the style of English and American acts of the day, with this release they matured, and got heavily into
Here's the first-time-ever cd reissue of this Swedish hard rock/psych band's 1971 debut album, a fun disc inspired perhaps by the likes of Cream and Hendrix and '60s beat groups. This was before Kebnekajse really got into the folk music of their homeland (or
We've had plenty of compilations that featured excerpts of Balinese Kecak performances, but never a recording of the complete Ramayana Monkey Chant, and it's pretty phenomenal! Recorded in 1987 by David Lewiston, who recorded most of the music featured on Nonesuch releases of Indonesian music, this release is not new but it's definitely a classic and totally worth checking out. An old fave indeed, Allan here first heard this 'round about the same time he first got into the Boredoms, and they're somehow linked in his mind, makes sense, 'cause we'd imagine Kecak like this could in fact have been an inspiration for some of the Boredoms' wilder stuff!
Those new to the sights and sounds of "Balinese Monkey Chants" might think that these performances and pieces are long passed on oral traditions and rituals from centuries ago, but in truth they are a modern cultural invention. They were created with the help of a Russian-born German artist named Walter Spies living in Bali between the World Wars, who was a strong advocate for the advancement of Balinese arts in order to appeal to the tourists who visited the island. Spies saw potential in the traditional Balinese trance rituals such as Sanghyang, a spirit communication usually during troubled times. One of the main features of these rituals was the Cak (pronounced chak) chorus, a group of males who chant in highly syncopated and precise rhythms. Spies thought that the Cak chorus would appeal to tourists if it could be made into an entertainment involving a story. So working with a Sanghyang group in the early nineteen thirties, they fashioned a drama from the great Hindu epic, the Ramayana, a story well known to the Balinese people and to many of the foreigners who frequented the island. Using dancers and performers to act out the main parts of dramatic adventures of Prince Rama and his wife Sita, her abduction by the evil Rawana and her rescue with the help of Hanuman and the King of The Monkeys, the role of the Cak Chorus became greatly transformed by not only expanding their variety of sounds by exploring the Balinese language abundant use of onomatopoeia to mimic gamelan rhythms, but also by integrating themselves into the action through choreographed waves of dramatically intense synchronized movements. Sitting in a large group of 5-6 semi-circles, the male chorus use their arms in unison to great effect, sometimes waving up or to the sides or forward while at other moments of the drama, the chorus representing the advancing armies of Rawana, half of the group will stand and lurch forward to display aggression while the other half lies back in surrender (James Cameron borrowed heavily from this for the Na'vi rituals in Avatar). While it is amazing to watch, it's also quite incredible to listen to as the waves of chanting hover between chaos and control in precise furies of sound. You'll hear what we mean about maybe influencing the Boredoms... If you don't have any Kecak in your collection, you don't know what you're missing!
This is record number two for this noisy metalcore combo from Cleveland Ohio. Much heavier and more chaotic (and more complex) than their first; churning riffs, howling vocals with the occasional midtempo moody bit, but those bits don't last for long, before they're crushed flat by a huge wall of downtuned fury. Somewhere between Neurosis and Coalesce. Nice.
We've always loved Keelhaul. How could we not? We love noise rock, and math rock, and KH are pretty much straddling the line between the two, spitting out dense, mathy bursts of grinding crunchy proggy metallic heaviness.
The cool thing about KH is that while they are super technical, and their songs are complex and convoluted and confusional, it never sounds wanky, these are just killer songs that happen to have a million parts crammed into each one, and the band aren't into singing, so they only do it once in a while, and they mostly just want to rock, it just so happens that their rocking involves strange time signatures and super tight instrumental workouts. In a lot of way, these guys sound a bit like a way more metal Polvo, which needless to say is awesome. The same sort of post rock vibe, sounds to these ears they the melodies sometimes get all Eastern and not typically rock sounding too.
Past records reminded us of groups like Neurosis or Coalesce, even Mastodon or Coalesce, but now with this, their first record in 6 years, we're hearing way more of a noise rock vibe, AmRep, Helmet, Tar, that sort of thing, but unlike those bands, this is way more complicated and heady, maybe like if the Champs teamed up with Lightning Bolt, went back in time and released a record on AmRep in 1992, but even that doesn't do this justice, there's a weird power metal vibe too, soaring melodies and catchy not-quite-choruses balancing the twisting serpentine compositions and the lurching pound and downtuned chug. However you slice it, these guys STILL RULE.
The ever-reliable Hydrahead label does it again -- though we already knew Keelhaul were good. Their other two albums of especially complex, heavy metalcore got high marks 'round these parts, and we know they absolutely kick ass live. Now they confront us with Subject To Change Without Notice. That's the title, but the only thing that's changed is that they're maybe even better. Or maybe they're referring to their modus operandi of tricky riffing and quiet/loud dynamics. Largely instrumental, super heavy, very very tight -- this is metal done right. For fans of Converge, Coalesce, Neurosis, Helmet, Mastodon...and The Gooch (one of their typically silly song titles).
We had never heard of artist Jeff Keen before, but by now, we know to just trust the curatorial, crate digging brilliance of Johnny Trunk and his ever expanding series of sonic wonders released via his Trunk label. This collection of unearthed soundtrack recordings from comics obsessed UK outsider artist Keen is no exception. Keen, a painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and more, created a whole series of films, for which he also recorded the soundtracks, using whatever he had on hand, field recordings from his local arcade, an old Atari, primitive delay machines, radios, tape loops, old synthesizers, as well as an arsenal of homemade instruments of his own invention, made from old dolls and toys and all manner of salvaged detritus. That's not to mention his own voice, speaking a language he invented, and delivered as if spoken by various characters he created. These soundtracks were all discovered after his death, a box of cassettes containing some of the coolest craziest sounds you'll ever hear.
From wild plunderponic jumbles of tangled voices woven into constantly shifting textures, and weird dizzying rhythmic arrangements, cool glitched out soundscapes, all FX drenched bleeps and bloops laid over buzzing strings and weird sonic blurts, blasts of super psychedelic noise, dubbed out into hypnotic pulsations, or whipped up into wild speaker destroying squalls, woozy loops peppered with all sorts of random sonic fragments, voices, sound effects, plenty of short wave interference, EVP like static and hum, twisted Speak & Spell style vocal garble, and lots of droney noisiness, caustic and chaotic one second, weirdly mesmerizing the next, some stretches that sound like old industrial music or power electronics, and others that sound like modern minimalism, or some lost Dada artifact, mysterious recordings reminiscent of an alien Kurt Schwitters.
Super cool, and super strange. Extensive liner notes and essays, as well as lots of photos!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We never listed this now-out-of-print cd-r from a few years back... but just discovered we actually have over a half dozen copies in our closet! So, grab it now while you can, it's pretty cool if you're into "human" drone sounds. Originally released as a limited cd-r on the Australian label Winter Records in 2005, this was an equally limited reissue by the mysteriously monikered, Keep Breathing. Comprised of three long-form (each over 20 minutes) drone compositions involving circular breathing on what sounds like bagpipes or melodicas, that modulate and flutter around a few notes in trance-like fashion. Reminiscent of Yoshi Wada, Ellen Fullman, Malachi, or even a slow motion Daniel Higgs in instrumental mode. Perfect music to have your chakras aligned to.
The sophomore release from this up-and-coming Norwegian black metal band crushes and kills just as much as their amazing 1998 debut did. Heavy and complex, a surefire hit with fans of Satyricon and Immortal.
Not sure what band leader Obsidian C.'s day job is, maybe he's a doctor or a lawyer or plays guitar on tour with Satyricon, 'cause whatever he does it obviously keeps him pretty busy, to the detriment of his band getting releases out in a timely fashion. Between their 2nd and 3rd release was a span of five years, and now it's been like two years since that 'comeback' ep came out. So, Obsidian and Co. are not rushing it, which is good. Plenty of time to craft a solid piece of Norwegian black metal fury, pure black/death/thrash art, which is what Armada is! Insane drumming, lots of unexpected twists (Spanish guitar!), technical flourishes, original and intense. This band, whose 1999 debut Through Times Of War we heralded as being on the level of heavyweights Emperor, Enslaved, Immortal, and Satyricon, still deserve to be mentioned in such illustrious company, even if they don't get as much recognition from the metal-buying masses.
Black metal fanatics ought to remember the band Keep Of Kalessin, who released two albums on the Avantgarde label in '98 and '99, including the magnificent debut Through Times Of War, a disc that placed Keep Of Kalessin (in our minds at least) in the forefront of a second wave of Norwegian black metal acts, following the lead of such bands as Satyricon and Emperor. But, after those two records, nothing at all was heard from KoK. Until now. Though, this isn't quite the same Keep of Kalessin, as guitarist/composer Obsidian C. has shed his previous bandmates, replacing them with none other than Frost (Satyricon, 1394) on drums and Attila (Mayhem, Tormentor, Aborym) on vocals!! While we wish former members Ghash, Vyl, and Warach were still on board, we'll admit that Obsidian C. sure found some excellent, well-qualified replacements! Musically, this is fast, fierce, devastating black metal in the tradition of KoK's previous efforts. Indeed, one track is a re-recording of a cut from the first KoK album. With their dark synth atmospheres and gradiose, raging metallic assaults, we hope the five songs on this new Reclaim ep aren't all we'll hear from KoK for the next five years!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Norwegian black metal, very much in the style of heavyweights Emperor, Enslaved, Immortal, and Satyricon (the later most of all). A very impressive debut, very heavy stuff indeed. Recommended! (Allan and Andee both took one home...)
First release from these Brooklyn psychedelic looped pop alchemists, featuring former aQ-er Frank, who is featured in all his badassness, along with the rest of the Keepaway crew, on the back cover, a goofy shot featuring much posturing, some gold medallions, and what appears to be some silver shiny panties on one of the pantsless band members, but don't be distracted by the visual silliness, cuz there's some seriously heady, sonic trippiness inside.
You might do an audio doubletake on first listen, within the first few seconds of "Yellow Wings" you'll immediately notice these guys bear an uncanny resemblance to fellow Brooklyn avant poppers Animal Collective, which is undeniable so we might as well just throw that out right here, these guys sound a lot like Animal Collective, but we love Animal Collective so we're already digging 'the sound', before we even begin to get into what it is that makes Keepaway their own (sort of) unique beast. The aforementioned "Yellow Wings" is probably the most Animal Collective-y track here, with its chiming guitars, chopped and looped samples, programmed percussion mixed with live drumming, the woozy vocals, which also remind us of Modest Mouse, but Keepaway add their own little twist with some gloomy almost new wavey eighties style riffs, just below the surface, it's a great pop jam for sure, and AC fans will eat this up, as will fans of other groups in the new wave of new wave, like The Drums, Surfer Blood and the like.
The rest of the record gets a little more spaced out, and only a little less Animal Collective-y, "Family Of The Son" begins all minimal and skittery, but once the warm guitars and wavery vocals come in, joined by some martial snares, and a hazy swath of warm shimmer, we're back in that sort of washed out hypno tribal psych groove otherworld Animal Collective, if not invented, at least REinvented. "I think About You All The Time" wraps woozy synths around skeletal rhythms, and some super sweet melodic vocals and handclaps, a retro electro love song that gets more trippy and druggy as it goes.
The last two tracks are just as fuzzy and sunshine-y and psychedelic and shimmery, stirring in some lush Beach Boys style harmonies, some spidery post rock guitars, a little old school indie jangle, some electronic glitch, thick fuzzy synths and of course loads of reverb and delay and other effects. Cool cool cool.
We're beginning come to terms with the fact that Ms. Keffer is pretty much our new noise rock crush (although hard to remember who our old one was... Matthew Bower?), not only is she foxy, she kicks up a seriously corrosive din that puts most of the other noisemakers, men AND women, to shame. This three track 12" is some seriously old school corrosive and caustic noise, fitting perfectly alongside groups like Robedoor (who she shared a split with recently), the Yellow Swans, and similarly minded noisemakers, but only at their fiercest and most brutal, cuz this 12" is fierce AND brutal. Seriously lo-fi, dense clouds of processed guitars, damaged FX, misfiring synths, who knows what all is in there, a pulverizing wall of damaged FX drenched sound that eventually attains a sort of Total / Sunroof! droned out bliss, albeit much harsher. ANd as with only the deftest of noisemakers, Keffer manages to make this blast of brutality downright listenable, but probably only to those with ears of steel (or collections packed with Masonna, Merzbow, Hijokaidan and the like...)!
It's hard to believe we've somehow managed to never review a record by Finnish free folk improviser Keijo Virtanen, considering the sheer number of cd-r and cassette releases he's amassed over the last few years, but we're making up for it this list by listing two different ones.
Keijo's After At Once is his very first non-cd-r release, and gathers up his usual group of sonic cohorts, known collectively as the Free Players, some of which also do time in the group Vapaa, to do that thing that seems to come so naturally to the Finnish, weave an enormous and gorgeously complex sonic tapestry of clattery improv, dark droning ambience, and stumbling foresty free folk. It should go without saying that anyone into Avarus, or Anaksimandros, or Kemialliset Ystavat or any of their like-minded musical brethren and sistren, will love this. They are all branches on the same tree, a massive sprawling sonic collective, even when they don't share members, they share ideas, and inspiration, a common musical heritage, and the results are always totally breathtaking. Here, the sound is crafted into slow building meandering epics, detuned steel string strum, shimmery distant chordal swells, occasional bells and chimes, strange simple minimal percussion, haunting deconstructed grooves, bursts of abstract tribal drumming, plenty of tape hiss and ambient noise, moaning horns, playful little Renn faire melodies, bizarre Comus-like vocals, throat singing, all tangled up and intertwined and overlapping, a gloriously untethered drift through some lost world of sound.
It's hard to believe we've somehow managed to never review a record by Finnish free folk improviser Keijo Virtanen, considering the sheer number of cd-r and cassette releases he's amassed over the last few years, but we're making up for it this list by listing two different ones.
This is a more recent cd-r, released on Antony Milton's Pseudo Arcana label, and again features Keijo teamed up with his band of Free Players, featuring some folks from fellow Finnish free folkers Vapaa, and like the Digitalis disc reviewed elsewhere on this list, it's another gorgeous slab of spaced out free folk bliss, and minimal psychedelic drone. As we mentioned in the other review, fans of Avarus, Kemialliset, Anaksimandros, and any of that sort of Finnish free weirdness, should just stop right now and pick this up (we actually only have a handful in stock). Fans of No Neck and Sunburned Hand will probably dig this a lot as well...
Keijo and his players sound like Hawkwind, if they had all of their instruments confiscated, and were forced to wander in a deep forest for years and years. A meandering, primitive folky drone, a sort of abstract freenoise, with bits of jazzy skitter, pagan tribalism, rumbling drone and creepy ambience. Simpler percussion, wood blocks, chimes, all manner of random clatter, broken drums, clanking cymbals, spread out over expanses of warbling organ drones, and murky minimal shuffle, peppered here and there are field recordings, snippets of conversations, strange dubbed out FX, new agey flutes, some playful bits of jaunty melody, and dense layers of thick, swirling sound. A deeply dark, dreamily dense listen.
- MPEG stream: One
- MPEG stream: Two
We picked this one up on the recommendation of Stefan "Troum" Knappe, who told us that Keim sounded a lot like Daniel Menche, Francisco Lopez, and Oval. His comparisons are certainly apt as Keim specializes in deep low-end textural drones, processed environmental recordings, and occasional hard-disc edits that reference quantum radioactive decay rather than indicate the pure digital circuit bending of the Raster-label folk.
Genius or madman? Both? Neither? It's going to be tough to decide as you delve into Ecstasy (sic) To Frenzy by Rodd Keith, the second Keith release in Tzadik's "Lunatic Fringe" series. Unreleased and unknown until now, Keith's studio epic "Shome Howe Jehovason Plays" takes up the bulk of this disc. There's two versions presented, each over a half-hour in length, the second playing in reverse. It's sheer lunacy from a man best known for his for-hire song-poem compositions like "Beat Of The Traps" (which, along with the title track and "Little Rug Bug" appear here as boni, although they also were included on The American Song-Poem Anthology released last year by Bar/None, so you might already have them.) However crazed and wonderful those examples of Keith's commercial songcraft are, they won't prepare you for "Shome Howe Jehovason Plays". His "cool cat" persona flies out the window, replaced with something altogether more alien. Wandering organ and maddening Vince Guaraldi Peanuts piano meets wordless, backwards Magmoid vocal babble. If you told me this was some Fluxus piece, or an Italian avant-garde prog experiment gone wrong, I'd believe it. We're not sure what Keith was thinking back when he recorded this opus (we don't know when that was exactly, but he died in 1974), but we do find it weirdly enjoyable. Outsider art for sure, completely cracked in fact. It certainly goes to prove that Rodd Keith was the right guy to tackle all those crazy poems folks sent in to have set to music, he was obviously feeling where they came from!
